Mark Manson interacts with the audience at SIBF.

Imran Mojib, Special Correspondent

There couldn’t have been a better platform than the SIBF stage to highlight the importance of reading to young students. And Mark Manson did it in his inimitable style.

“I wasn’t a good student, I got terrible grades, I didn’t do the work, but I’ve a great capacity to read a lot so I learnt a lot,” said the renowned author while revealing that it was his reading habit that gave him the edge and won him international stardom.

He further advised them to read plenty and study hard because even though it seems meaningless to know about chemistry formulas or mean temperatures, the point is you are learning how to learn, learning how to work and think, learning how to use tools to help you to learn. That, he says is the point of school.

But on a larger stage Manson is a self-help wizard. The Subtle Art of Redefining Success propelled Mark to international fame when it was published in 2016. It made the NY Times Bestseller list and sold two million copies in its first year alone. So, what makes Mark stand out from the crowd, in an extremely crowded “self-help” space?

 “I’m realistic,” he said, “I know conventional advice is to follow your dream, and work hard, focus on positive affirmations and you’ll be successful and happy. But a lot of people have got into trouble that way. Unless you have the right idea about what success is for you, you can achieve all these goals and still be miserable.”

Like Stephen Covey, (the famous educator, author and businessman) said, you can start climbing the ladder of success but find halfway up that your ladder is leaning up against the wrong building Mark explained.

“So the idea is you need to have a properly defined idea of what success is to you. So really, The Subtle Art… is all about coming to terms with all of the inevitable unimportant imperfections in life and then choosing to not give a care about them. It’s about caring about the few things that truly matter.”

And his mantra for well-being? “It’s not about avoiding failure, it’s about getting better at failure. It’s not about knowing everything but becoming more comfortable in not knowing anything.”